“Come dance with us Ivy, you haven’t been on the dance floor once,” and she refused to take no for an answer.
“Sorry,” Ivy mouthed to her mum as she gave in and let Georgia pull her into the throngs of partygoers. Her mother smiled and shouted, “Don’t worry about it, have fun!”
Ivy saw June get to her feet and follow her mother towards the bar and then the crowds closed around her and she lost sight of them. She sighed and turned and let herself be led to the dance floor. She danced self consciously for what seemed barely a minute before she heard the loudest sound she had ever heard and she started to turn, confused but then she was struck by something and knocked to the floor, unconscious.
Chapter thirteen
She would never know how long she was out but it could only have been a minute, two at the very most.
Of her senses it was her hearing that returned first, muffled, as if she were underwater. It took a moment for what she was hearing to register but when it did she realised she could hear screaming. The kind of screaming you hear in horror movies as hapless women are chased and butchered by psychotic murderers. Screams of pure, uninhibited terror. She could hear something else too, a crackling, but this sound she couldn’t identify, as she had nothing in her memory to match it against.
She was on her stomach and tried to roll over but something heavy was on her legs. She tried to kick it off but it wouldn’t budge, so she wiggled, using her elbows to dig into the floor. She came up against something but when she tried to push it away she felt flesh and it was only then that she realised she was looking at the body of a woman, naked apart from a few shreds of clothing. She gagged, horrified, and wriggled harder in the other direction, desperate to get away from the sight in front of her.
This renewed effort freed enough of her body so she could turn and sit up, and she discovered that it was another body that had trapped her. She kicked out at it, anything to get the feel of that skin off of her, hot and wet and sticky with blood. The body rolled over and she saw the frozen expression on the girls face, her eyes open but unseeing, half her face gaping open from a wound that ripped her from ear to chin, the hair singed off and the scalp exposed.
What had happened?
“Mum! June,” Ivy tried to call but all that emerged was a croak, her throat was hot and dry and she felt like she couldn’t breathe. Everywhere she looked the air was red and black, leaving her disorientated.
“Mum!” she tried again, and heard a groaning to her left. She crawled in that direction but couldn’t get to the sound; there was wood and metal and bodies, so many bodies in her way. They were piled on top of each other and she sobbed in disbelief at what she was seeing.
What the hell had happened?
A hand emerged in her sight and she thought it waved to her so she grabbed at it but then saw with horror that it was no longer attached to an arm and she screamed a gargled scream and dropped it.
Everywhere she looked the people were dead. Torso’s missing heads, arms and legs littering the floor like some kind of macabre doll kit set.
It was only then that she realised the crackling she had heard earlier was flames, and they were advancing, all around her, and she knew then that she was going to die here. And for the briefest of moments she accepted it, because what if her mother and sister were amongst these bodies - she didn’t want to live without them.
But then she thought; what if they’re not?
And she knew that as long as she had hope she had to fight to live. Then she saw it, a way through the flames where the roof had collapsed and through it she caught a glimpse of sky, the merest sliver before it was gone and the red and the black and the smoke closed in again. She had something to aim for now, and knowing there was a way out of this hell gave her new strength. With adrenaline flowing she made her way towards it. It couldn’t have been far but it may as well have been a mile. She made slow progress, trying not to look down but by doing so she kept slipping in blood and standing on people. Lifeless, disembodied people and for each one she thought; that’s someone’s daughter/son/sister/brother/lover, and she thought she would die from the horror alone. Others made noises; groans, screams and wails of pain. She had never heard anything like it before. They were burnt beyond recognition yet in some a flicker of life remained.
“Quick, come this way,” she heard in her ear, a male voice, and she sobbed with the immense relief of knowing that she wasn’t the last person left alive in this hell. She felt his hand take her hand and it felt weird but she didn’t know why, but it was also the sweetest touch she had ever known. Together they pushed through the piles of debris, over and around the bodies, with flames licking their footprints and reaching out for their shadows and then he was pushing her, half lifting half shoving, up and up, through the hole in the ceiling where it had collapsed and from where freedom and survival beckoned.
“Pull yourself up,” he told her, and she tried but could find no grip.
“I can’t,” she said and his answer was simple but made the most sense of any words she had ever heard spoken.
“You have to.”
And he was right; she did, so she reached out again and felt wires, dangling. She grabbed them and she pulled and using a strength she didn’t know she possessed she pulled herself out of the hole. The air outside slapped her like ice across the face, cool on her fiery skin and she gasped and stumbled and slid and slipped until she made it to the ground. She was out and she looked around, trying to make sense of what she was seeing, but she couldn’t even begin to fathom what had caused such damage. Everywhere she looked there was fire. Burning cars, downed power lines, the wreckage of buildings; it was like something out of a movie, a war zone. She turned and scanned the path through the wreckage where she had escaped, anxious to help the man who had helped her, but there was no sign of him. And although she waited for a minute, perhaps two, he never emerged. She wanted to cry but she thought, quite correctly, that if she did she may never stop and she needed her wits about her because even though she had escaped, her ordeal was far from over. She had to find the others; she had to find her mother and June but where to start?
She took a step and glass crunched underfoot, but it was a few more steps before she realised that it was cutting into her flesh and she looked down and realised with surprise that she was barefoot, somehow she had lost her sandals. It wasn’t the pain that alerted her, she could feel nothing, but rather the sensation of something cutting into her skin. Still she kept going, picking her way through the mess around her to the street, where only an hour earlier she had walked with her family. It was unrecognisable now. Then, the streets had been filled with carefree tourists and smiling locals hawking their wares. Music and the smell of delicious spices and cooking had filled the air. Now all she could smell was smoke and another, horrific, smell that she was loathe to let her mind try and identify.
There were people all around her. Dazed, blackened people. Blood soaked and terribly burnt, some missing limbs but still alive. Most people were fleeing the scene but others were trying to get back into what was left of the bar, desperate to find lost loved ones. Others were good Samaritans trying to help.
Her mind refused to process anything beyond finding her mother and sister, and she spent an hour searching through the rubble and the people, calling out their names, without success. She had to turn over bodies, search faces, as the injuries and the burnt flesh made easy identification impossible for most. There were so many bodies without limbs, so many limbs without bodies. Every time she had to touch one she had to choke down her fear that this might be the one, this might be her mother or June, and she made herself simply focus on the job at hand. That was the only way she knew she might have a chance of remaining sane until the morning.
She started to grab at people who passed her, their burns severe and in many cases the flesh simply falling off their bodies.
“Have you seen my mother?” she asked them, and started to describe her but they just shook th
eir head or stared right through her, unseeing, trapped in their own world of terror, so she let them go.
“Miss, you need to come with us to hospital,” a man said, putting an arm around her shoulders and trying to lead her towards a van.
“No,” she said, shaking the arm off “No. I have to stay here. I have to find my mother and my sister.”
“You need help.”
“I’m fine.”
“You need to come with me.”
And something in the voice made her stop. She looked at him and she saw concern in his eyes.
“Why?”
“Please, just come with me.”
She was confused. Why was he so worried about her when there were so many people who clearly needed more help than she did? She had her arms and her legs, she was fine. She pushed him away.
“No,” she said. “I won’t leave them.”
And he let her go because she gave him no choice, and he went on to help the next person, because there was no shortage of people needing help.
Eventually though, she did let herself be taken to a hospital. After she had searched and called and wandered around and around the same small area, watching the flames demolish the buildings and praying that her mother and June had got out. After she had climbed onto roofs of cars and called and called their names until what little voice she had left was all but gone. They were nearer the front door, she realised. They had gone to the bar to get drinks so perhaps they had made it out; perhaps they were this very minute receiving treatment at a hospital, or looking for her.
The walking wounded and the dead were being evacuated all around her. Replaced by fireman and policeman and tourists, ones who had decided to linger over dinner somewhere else or get an early night at their hotel, the ones who were unscathed. They all came to help.
Everyone wanted to help.
She let someone put her onto a stretcher and place her in the back of an open bed truck. As they drove through the streets she looked up at the stars in a daze and for a moment she thought she was back home, in the treehouse with Walt. She reached out and felt for his hand beside her and it was taken, and she closed her eyes and smiled and faded out of consciousness again.
When she came to she was in a corridor. It was the sound that roused her and for a fearful moment she thought she was back in the wreckage of the club, because all she could hear were the moans and screams of people in pain. Then she saw the bright lights above her and felt the cool white sheet someone had placed on top of her and she realised where she was.
Mum, June.
She made herself get up off the stretcher and no one tried to stop her, they were too busy trying to help the dying. For the first time she let herself think about her own injuries, confused as to whether she was not injured enough to warrant attention, or whether she was so badly injured they had simply given up on her. She figured it was the first because from what she could see, it wasn’t too bad. She was black, as if someone had thrown a pail of black paint all over her, and there was lots of blood but she seemed ok, the pain was minor and she could handle it. Besides, she could walk, and that was all that mattered right then.
She paced the floors and corridors, weaving her way through the wounded and the doctors and nurses. Fraught but with determined expressions on their faces as they tried to cope with an event they were clearly and woefully unprepared for, although they were doing the very best they could.
Everywhere she looked she saw people in pain, not just physical but emotional. A man, holding his head in his hands and shaking his head repeatedly, crying out “my wife, my wife,” over and over and over.
When she had exhausted the living, Ivy took a moment to gather what strength she had left and then went to check the dead. Outside the morgue a young girl was pacing, endlessly back and forth from wall to wall. Ivy heard one nurse whisper to another that the girl’s parents were both dead inside. Please don’t let that happen to me, she prayed before she entered the room.
But her prayers weren’t to be answered that night, because inside Ivy found the body of her mother, identifiable by the bracelet on her mother’s beautiful and familiar wrist. The bracelet had been given to her mother by her father years ago and she wore it always. It was silver with tiny charms and Ivy knew it well, as she had spent many moments over the years admiring it. Now it dangled from a hand hanging out underneath a bloodied and blackened sheet.
And in that instant Ivy’s world collapsed.
She lifted the sheet, she had to be sure. In death her mother had no dignity. Her body was naked, her clothes incinerated in the explosion. Her hair was gone, and a lot of her skin as well, just red flesh remaining, exposed. But it was her mother, of that there was no doubt.
Ivy stayed by her mother as the hours crept closer to dawn, and she wept. She wept until she had no fluids left inside her, and then she continued to weep anyway. She held her mother’s hand and kissed the fingers, and she closed her eyes and tried to imagine a world in which this nightmare had never happened.
Elsewhere the world woke up to hear of the innocence lost during the night, and while it expressed horror and shed tears and prayed, Ivy sat there, holding her mother’s hand. She looked at the broken body beside her and tried to reconcile it to her mother, her beautiful mother. Her mother whose laughter brightened rooms, whose smile made everything seem ok. Who sang in the shower and never missed an episode of Better Homes and Gardens. The mother who had carried her inside her womb, protecting and nurturing her while she grew and who had done so ever since. Whose kisses cured every ailment and whose hugs soothed away any upset. Who loved her unconditionally.
Her beautiful mother, with the shining eyes and curly hair and who always smelled like an exotic mixture of frangipani and vanilla. Who was clever and funny and warm hearted.
Her beautiful, beautiful mother.
Ivy stayed at her mother’s side while more victims were bought in.
She sat there while people came in search of their loved ones; their missing friends and family.
She sat there while many of them found the person they were hoping not to find, and she shared silently in their raw grief.
She sat there, still, while others left, their hope remaining intact. The person they were seeking was still out there somewhere, perhaps alive. They had other hospitals and clinics to search.
And every time the door opened she held her breath, hoping that her sister would walk through.
But she never did.
Chapter fourteen
“Ivy wake up, we’re home.”
“Mm,” Ivy murmured without opening her eyes. She was dreading this, stepping off the plane back onto New Zealand soil, without her mother or sister. Or, more correctly, without them alive, by her side, tanned and laughing and reminiscing about the wonderful holiday they’d just had.
She walked back through the same airport they’d walked through together, only just over a week and a half before. She saw the shops they had spent time in, buying magazines and trashy paperbacks to read on the flight. The café where they had drunk coffee and shared bowls of potato wedges with cheese and sour cream and sprinkled with bacon. Innocent gestures, the ordinary, inane moments that together add up to make a life. How so much could have happened, changed, in such a short period of time was something she still couldn’t wrap her head around, maybe never would.
She clutched the bag that held the container holding their ashes close. She had refused to let it out of her sight at the airport in Australia and once Craig explained the circumstances to the airport staff an exception had been made. She didn’t know what she would have done without him these last few days. His arrival in Australia, the same day she flew there with her mother’s body, meant that she didn’t have to make the big decisions. She could retreat into herself and let Craig deal with the formalities. He had bought things containing her sisters DNA with him, for formal identification. She couldn’t think about it, wouldn’t think about it, wanted nothing to do with it.
He arranged for the cremations, as it was the last thing she’d wanted to think of. She had seen and felt too much fire and heat for a lifetime, and she bore the fresh wounds to prove it. And although she hated the thought of a crematorium finishing off what the bombs had started, she figured it was what both June and Pat would have wanted, and so they were cremated together.
After they collected the rest of the luggage, including her mothers and sisters, she followed Craig out to the car park with her head down, focused only on the soles of his shoes. This was wrong. She shouldn’t be here, couldn’t do this. Couldn’t go back home where everyone would look at her and wonder why she had been spared. What was so special about her that she got to live, when so many others died? When so many lost limbs and faced months, years probably of surgeries and rehabilitation, why had she escaped with only superficial burns, a few stitches and a freshly shorn crew cut?
She had no answers.
Craig told her it was all in her head and that everyone was just grateful she had survived; no one would even think such a thing, he said.
But she did. She thought it. It was there constantly; tap dancing across her brain like a drill and never letting her think of anything else.
Why was she spared?
She didn’t want to be. She wanted to be with her mother and her sister, and she’d had some very dark thoughts in the last week about how she could accomplish this, especially in the deep reaches of the night when each hour stretched long and silent and she was unable to sleep. Every time she closed her eyes she was back there; hearing that loud thud again, feeling the shockwave knock her off her feet. The heat, the screams, the bodies; it was all right there on the edge of her conscious ready to flood her thoughts the moment she let her guard down. The colours and the smells were as vivid as if she were still there.
The drive home was silent. Craig had been her rock, and sometimes it was easy for her to forget that he was grieving too. That he had lost his fiancé, the life they had planned together. The thought of the babies that June would now never have bought the pain afresh and she spent the journey with her forehead pressed against the car window, her tears leaving salty tracks on the glass.
When Stars Collide Page 6
